I may have done something that will hurt Duckie

My good friend J has an 8yo difficult child son. She also has a 5yo easy child daughter that Duckie is very good friends with (friendship grew out of time spent together by the moms). J has struggled with her difficult child having play dates and being bored this summer. He's pretty mild for a difficult child, but doesn't seem to be invited back to friends' houses, although the other parents are more than willing for J to watch their kids at her house. I think it's more a scheduling problem that an actual difficult child problem as a lot of these families are dual incomes, had vacations or kids in camp.
This is where I come in. Duckie's best friend has an 8yo easy child brother. He's a great and easy going kid from a great and easy going family. I suggested to J that she try getting the two boys together because I'm sure this other family would reciprocate with play dates, etc. It's been successful, and J's difficult child isn't so bored and lonely now, but... the two daughters are hitting it off big and Duckie is being left out in the cold. They even had a sleepover last night after an all day play date.
It's not like Duckie doesn't have other friends, but I think she's really going to feel hurt and abandoned because she was previously the link between these two and now they don't really need her anymore.

This is a pretty typical kid situation. It might be the excitement of the new friendship, and they don't really mean to exclude Duckie at all.

When my girls faced this situation a couple of times over the years, I'd encourage them to invite both friends over to help maintain the current friendship until the newness wears off. This seemed to work out pretty well.

Thanks, Lisa. I know it's a typical situation, but I fear Duckie's reaction won't be. The worst part is that all three girls are in the same program at school, though best friend is in a different classroom. So, I can see a tug-o-war between the three of them. The worst thing is, despite the problems she's had socially, Duckie has had no practice being the odd one out. It's going to be hard.

A very similar thing happened with Tink. Where I live, Tink is the only child without a sibling, save for a 9 year old girl across the way (well she has an infant brother). Anyways, and I think I have mentioned this before, when all the kids are out playing, Tink tends to get left out a LOT, and more often than not, sibling gang up against her. Well across the way upstairs moved a guy who had his daughter for the weekends. She was also 9. Soon after I was sitting for the girl, and Tink had a friend all to herself. She was only here on the weekends, and I had her overnight every Friday that Tink did not go to her dad's.

About May, she moved in with her dad while her mom moved to FL to buy a home. She was to stay with dad to finish out the school year, and then move in with mom. By then I was getting pretty sick. the dad was looking for a sitter on M, W & F. I suggested he try the lady with the other 9 yo girl.

Well of COURSE the 2 9YO girls get along better, and now Tink is back to having no friends here. I feel so bad for her.

When the one 9yo moved, the other 9yo went back to not playing outside. At all. Kinda weird.

There is some primitive mommy instinct that comes out when one feels one's child will be ostracized/shunned/left out. I know it well. The degree of emotion one feels is far larger than the individual event warrents. Intellectually I understood but that instinct to protect and nurture one's own is strong.

The good thing is that often the honeymoon will be over when the situation changes. Once school starts they may not have as much in common. They will drift apart. Maybe.

Secondly, Duckie will have a series of events where she will not have control over what other people do in relationship to what she wants. It's a gradual learning process. You aren't going to be able to out think and manuever and accomodate to the point of easing the dissatisfaction and meltdown. On the other had I'm big on planning.

Plan in the event that Duckie meltsdown or whatever her reaction may be. Plan how to turn it into a teaching moment and how to have her view it in the big scheme of things. You don't want to alter life events but teach her how to cope with them and how to put them in proper perspective.

My example would be easy child being called a not so pleasant name at 11 on the school bus(which is common, evidently) easy child wondered if maybe he was what they called him. I suggested that if he didn't know why would he give his peers who knew less than him that much credit. We loved him and we would accept him for whatever path he chose but to not ever let other people have that much input or control over how he felt about himself.
Believe me I was in full warrior mom stance but I tried to swallow it and do what was best for easy child at the time. Behind the scenes I spoke to the guidance counselor and school to make them aware of what was happening on the bus. easy child carried his feelings that a lot of the "jocks" thought less of him than average but he also had to deal. I didn't fix it even though I wanted to rip heads. I did help him learn and understand on a deeper level.

Hugs to Duckie but more so to you. Look at what Duckie needs and go in that direction.

TM,as moms, we all feel protective of our children.It hurts us to see our kids left out. Unfortunately, this will happen many times with girls. When my easy child was Duckie's age,she experienced this. How we dealt with it : either she would invite other friends over or we would have a " mother/ daughter day" where we did something special together or, many times, we would just talk about it and move on because it is a part of a girl's life.

I know that Duckie is involved in several activities. So was my easy child. It helped to have play dates with the girls in the various clubs and groups.My daughter always had a large pool of friends that were from different areas of her life. So when she was the odd man out with her school friends, she could arrange a play date with her Daisy friends.

Well, I'm trying to keep her out of threesome situations with both friends for now. We'll be taking boyfriend & boyfriend's brother with us to the park tomorrow. J may or may not bring her kids, but there will be plenty of other friends there so I hope Duckie won't feel left out. She has been acting rather stressed out about friends since this started last week, I hope she won't spiral downward for it. She was hurt that neither of these friends came to see her play last night (each mom told me their girl was too tired from the sleepover the night before). She's been on the brink a few times this week and had a rage in her bedroom complete with screaming and throwing things this morning. The good news is that she apologized and cleaned up the mess quickly.
Also, since she's been been bored the last couple of days, I did what any good mom would do:
I took her shopping and to lunch with-Daddy today. She got some cute things for school and a way cool American Girl bag and back to school kit. It was quality time for the two of us.